HankB
Member
The one commandment of HF:
Do not buy anything that could maim or kill you upon failure
HF lathes are made by SIEG in China, which makes the majority of mini-lathes sold in the USA. The design is fundamentally sound, but they're a little short in fit & finish. I have a MicroMark 7x14 mini lathe - a longer version of what HF sells - and after fabricating tapered gibs and doing some fitting on the carriage, cross slide, and compound, I reduced the measured slop from >0.005" down to around 0.0002" - 0.0003", about as fine as I can measure. And it's a LOT smoother. Given the limitations in rigidity and such, that's pretty good for a relatively cheap benchtop machine.I actually ran one of their mini vertical mills and mini lathes for years, and if you spend a little bit of time truing things up & improving tolerances, and if you understand the limitations of smaller, lower quality machines, they're an excellent value.